


Uplink and Inquiry

by fencesit



Category: Expert Judgment on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion... - Sandia Labs
Genre: Archaeology, F/F, Friendship, IN SPACE!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:00:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25475776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fencesit/pseuds/fencesit
Summary: A professor aboard an inter-System college ship talks to a colleague who's been involved in a massive archaeological dig on the Third Planet.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14
Collections: Juletide 2020





	Uplink and Inquiry

**Author's Note:**

  * For [draconicsockpuppet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/draconicsockpuppet/gifts).



The intracom notice that they've entered comm link range sends Adacy Mywither gliding across the room to her comm unit. The other end of the link rings softly while Adacy pivots to make herself a cup of tea, and by the time she's put the bag in her mug the downlink has been established and no one's picked up the other end — the link interface asks her if she wants to leave a message, scolding her with a bland and factual notice that it's very early in the morning for the uplink net she's trying to contact. 

"It's Adacy, we'll be in orbit in a few weeks," she says into the downlink; a set of placidly blinking dots assure her that her words are being recorded and will be transferred across the System when she's satisfied with it. "I'm sending you an invite to link up to my class tomorrow — later today for you, I think — if your schedule and the link quality permits. We're doing our pre-walk through your site, so..." 

Adacy trails off. She hates leaving messages, and this one has her more flustered than most. If only they could have a direct conversation! She sighs, watches the uplink's dots blink and grow to record her sigh, and then winces as she deletes several seconds of awkward silence from the message recording. 

"Don't worry about it if you can't make it," Adacy adds to the end of her message. "I'll link up to you again when we're closer to schedule the class's actual visit at a time that works for you." 

_Downlink Recording Saved!_ the link interface tells her. _We detected the word INVITE and SCHEDULE, did you mean to attach a calendar appointment, meeting notice, and/or schedule questionnaire?_

Clicking "meeting notice" takes Adacy to a menu where she can select the next day's morning class and attach and invite to it to her downlink message, clicking impatiently through the helpfully unhelpful warning menus about the potential problems of scheduling a real-time voice link with someone so far away. She knows! It doesn't need to remind her every time! There should be a way to turn it off! 

After clearing the last menu, Adacy finishes her tea and waits, staring blankly into space and thinking about her lesson for the next day until the dots all blink at the same time and chime triumphant. _Downlink message and uplink invite successfully sent to SUISI BRAWELL_ , it tells her. _Please close this interface to save energy!_

Adacy has plans to revise, including letting the students know that they won't be meeting in the usual classroom tomorrow. One of the benefits of teaching at or being a student of a trans-System residential college is the chance to directly visit interesting locations in a manner less constrained than what one would experience at a plant-side college, via asynchronous link-based course, or even onboard one of the space station universities. Adacy's archeology students benefit from being able to visit all kinds of archeological sites and institutes, but she always makes her classes convene for instruction in the simulation chamber first, so that they can get their clumsy first impressions and endearingly off-bases guesses out of the way before ever stepping foot planetside. 

It leaves more time for actual archeological inquiry to take place during their short time in atmo. 

Adacy arrives early for her class's turn in the simulation chamber, exchanging morning pleasantries with the professor who'd used the room before her and then setting the parameters for the program she'll be running for her students: a site deep in the jungle of Planet Three where Suisi Brawell has uncovered a large area covered in black granite and surrounded by earthen mounds. The data is out of date, of course, but it's recent enough for Adacy's purposes and it will probably be more interesting for the students to see how much a site can change during the course of a dig. 

"A burial site," suggests one of her students when Adacy has finished the class's usual opening statements and brought the students into the simulation room, where the fractured slabs of granite spread out in all directions and the strange calls of Planet Three animals fills the air. The class has to all walk together in the same direction at roughly the same pace — the simulation room has its limits — but Adacy is content to let the students decide where to go and what to look at. This isn't their first pre-visit simulation, so they're able to launch into analysis and debate smoothly without Adacy leading the discussion. 

"That'd be one hell of a grave stone," says a second student. "Maybe a meeting place, like a large plaza?" 

"Are you kidding?" asks the first. "With the climate in this region back then? They'd have died of heat exhaustion." 

A third says, "They preferred large indoor centers with at least rudimentary artificial climate control for large meetings. Even when they did meet outside in large numbers, they preferred 'grass lawns'—" She says the words carefully, an unfamiliar phrase on an inexperienced tongue. "—and this could never have supported growing anything." 

Adacy's comm interface chimes with an incoming uplink, and Adacy shunts the input into a private channel before it can jump to network with the student's comm interfaces. "Suisi," she says, "you're a little late. As always." 

There's a slight delay, and then Suisi laughs. "I never get used to how damn long it takes to uplink," she grumbles, good-naturedly like she's smiling while she talks. 

Or maybe that's wishful thinking — _Adacy_ is smiling. It's good to hear Suisi's voice again. It's been a long time since they were students together on a ship like this, able to talk face-to-face every day. 

"If you have the time, I like to let them reach their own conclusions before interrupting," Adacy says. 

"It wasn't much advanced notice, but I have time, yeah. Let 'em theorize." 

So they listen in comfortable silence as students continue arguing, bouncing from one topic to the next — is there a pattern to the cracks in the granite; is there any significance to the use of other colors of granite elsewhere on the site; are these messages even in the same language; could it have been a religious site; could it have been an unfinished construction, a ruined monument, an art installation? 

"Oh, an _art installation_ ," she says to Adacy in their private channel. "That's a new one." 

"It's a new class," Adacy explains. The granite slab is (or was, when it was constructed) perfectly square and nearly half the length of the trans-System ship Adacy and her class are all aboard, yet it was clearly constructed without finesse or craftsmanship. It must have been a large public work, and absolutely functionless, and therefore not the kind of art installation that governments of the time would have been likely to fund. 

"Ah, well, there might be _some_ merit in the inquiry," Suisi says. "Let me talk to them, they're just debating the definition of art now." 

Adacy connects Suisi's uplink to her student's comms and provides a quick introduction, thinking it's a shame that Suisi can't see their star-struck expressions in order to better bask in her well-earned fame. Her students had been absolutely _floored_ to learn they'd be visiting one of _Suisi Brawell's_ Planet Three digs, and Adacy is so looking forward to watching them trip over themselves and each other when they go down to the dig in person. 

For now, it's enough to listen to Suisi launch into greeting the students and then debunking their hasty assumptions in that charming way of hers that makes students feel smart even when they're being told their wrong. "Saying it's an art installation _has_ got me curious," Suisi says eventually. "What do you think it would be trying to say, if it were an art installation?" 

The student who'd suggested it looks ecstatic at even this faint praise. "It just seems so, um..." The student fumbles. "So pointedly uninhabitable? Unwelcoming? But it's so big and the map in our display is showing it to be so square, so it would have been done very deliberately..." 

"Oh, Adacy, you always do attract the best and brightest," Suisi says to her eagerly over their private link, and then to the students says: "Yes, yes, very well-reasoned! In truth, this site is so old that we'd forgotten what it was every built for, so you've all been asking exactly the kinds of questions I asked myself when I arrived. I can't wait to see if you can work out what it is once you're on site." 

"Have _you_ worked it out?" Adacy asks later, when the student have gone on to their next class and Adacy is free to wander this out-of-date copy of Suisi's dig. Suisi has been puzzling over this site for a long while, so long that Adacy hadn't even thought to ask when they'd communicated to discuss the class's visit. 

"Yes," Suisi says, sounding so pleased at having solved her latest puzzle. "I don't think the students have a chance in hell of figuring it out, but I think you will, once you see what I've found." 

"Oh," Adacy says, pressing her hands to her cheeks to hide the pleases flush that Suisi can't even see. "Don't flatter me like that, I'll get a big head and you'll had to deflate it in front of my students when I don't live up to your expectations." 

Suisi laughs again, just as happy and kind as always. "Adacy, don't sell yourself short!" she says, her admonishment full of warm feelings that Adacy can't name. "You're three times as clever as any of the people who built what I've found. If _you'd_ built this, it wouldn't have been lost all these years. You'll see." 

All these years later and Suisi's confidence in her is still unshakable! It's the best feeling, as much as it makes Adacy nervous. When she hangs up, she'll have to refresh herself by looking up everything Suisi's already published about the site.; it wouldn't do to disappoint her dear friend. 


End file.
